Scotiabank makes a winning investment with Google Display & Video 360

As one of Canada’s largest banks, Scotiabank knows the importance of making good investments — which is why the firm chose to invest heavily in its digital strategy to improve overall customer experience. To accomplish this goal, the bank created a network of five Digital Factories over its key markets, bringing together experts in engineering, design, digital marketing, analytics, agile delivery, and software product management in one environment.

In Canada, the Digital Factory was looking for ways to improve efficiency of customer acquisition. Historically, the bank relied on tactics like paid search and display remarketing to acquire new customers. While these tactics were performing relatively well, the team knew it could go further and decided to explore new tools to reach even more potential customers.

“As digital marketers we are constantly tasked with finding the right balance between scale and efficiency,” acknowledges Matthew Bennett, director of digital acquisition marketing at Scotiabank. The digital performance team was looking to use its digital information to find suitable prospects for two credit cards. Specifically, the team wanted to win new customers and upsell holders of the bank’s no-fee, lower-tier cards to its premium cards. At the same time, the team wanted to exclude existing customers who already had premium cards, to avoid spending ad dollars where they weren’t needed.

The Digital Factory team turned to Google Display & Video 360, where they were able to combine carefully tailored audience lists with a Programmatic Guaranteed ad-buying feature. This allowed the team to reach (or exclude) Scotiabank’s current customers with a new offer, achieve guaranteed access to premium publisher inventory, and increase its overall reach. In addition, the bank sought to customize its ads to the two different audiences, making the ads more relevant to both existing and new consumers.

Scotiabank began by setting up deals with six of Canada’s premium publishers over a two-month period. Some deals excluded the bank’s current premium cardholders with an objective of acquiring new customers, while other deals only included its lower-tier cardholders with an objective of upselling them a premium card.

Scotiabank originally hypothesized that Display & Video 360’s Programmatic Guaranteed feature combined with audience lists would help drive consideration for its products and assist paid search and display remarketing in completing the acquisition process. But the results far exceeded these expectations. The bank found that this winning combination cut its overall cost per acquisition (CPA) by 46%, compared to its standard prospect campaigns.

Several publishers also registered a similar CPA compared with Scotiabank's standard remarketing activity, an impressive outcome given that the bank was not using low-funnel audiences for remarketing as part the evaluation.

“While our core KPI focus was set on unique impression reach and assisted conversion volume entering into the test, what immediately stood out for the team was a few of the publishers’ ability to drive CPA efficiency on last click,” Matthew says.

Finally, Scotiabank learned that success with reservation deals today requires a constant dialogue with partnering publishers. One publisher in particular was not performing to expectations and worked with the bank to improve its offering. Within a week, it became the most efficient publisher from a CPA perspective.

By working more closely with their publishing partners, and using Display & Video 360, Scotiabank was able to significantly increase efficiency and reward for everyone.